Creative releases Linux X-Fi driver under the GPL

Creative has released its Sound Blaster X-Fi Linux driver under the GPL. The …

Creative has officially released the Sound Blaster X-Fi Linux driver under the General Public License. The X-Fi, which was initially introduced in 2005, has been poorly supported on the Linux platform. Creative released a disappointing binary driver for the product in 2007, which was only compatible with 64-bit systems and had numerous other major technical problems.

Now that the source code has been released, the open source software community can work to fix the bugs and make the driver more robust. The source code is available for download from a Creative's support forums, but the developers say that it is not yet ready for user on production systems. It supports ALSA PCM playback, recording, and mixing, but doesn't support external I/O modules. Users who are already testing the drivers are experiencing mixed results. For some, it doesn't appear to be working yet.

For more details about the new driver and some background information about the status of previous X-Fi support and driver development efforts, read the detailed overview at Phoronix.